Rosabelle shaw, p.13
Rosabelle Shaw, page 13
“My love to Papa,” Fanny wrote, “and please tell him that I am delighted to hear his rheumatism is better, and much love to yourself, from your ever affecate sister.—Fanny.”
“Now,” said Fanny, as she licked the envelope and sealed it down, “that’s done. What would you like to play?”
“Backgammon, please,” said Jay promptly.
The friendship between Mr. Wallace and Dr. Inglis had grown and deepened in the last few years, and the latter had formed the habit of “dropping in” at the Manse after dinner. He knew that he was welcome, and he enjoyed the minister’s company, and appreciated the comfort of his chairs and his bright cosy fire. Sometimes the two friends would talk for hours, sitting with their feet in the fender, and sometimes they would work—each at his own subject—in companionable silence. Inglis brought many of his problems to the wise old man, and he found that even strictly medical problems became clearer when expounded to an intelligent and sympathetic listener.
One cold stormy evening in October, Dr. Inglis dropped in as usual and found Mr. Wallace reading a book by the fire.
“Well, well, here you are!” Mr. Wallace exclaimed. “I had almost given you up—you’re late to-night.”
“I’ve been over at Shaws,” Inglis said, sinking into a chair and stretching out his long thin legs to the fire.
“To see Jay?” inquired Mr. Wallace.
Inglis nodded.
“And what do you make of Jay?”
“I can’t make anything of him,” said the doctor dejectedly. “I wish to Heaven I could find out what was the matter. I’ve examined that child until I’m tired. I’m thinking I’ll have to suggest having another opinion.”
“Have mine,” offered Mr. Wallace, with a twinkle in his eye.
Inglis laughed somewhat mirthlessly. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he admitted, “but it’s a surgical opinion I must have.”
“I wonder if it is.”
“What are you getting at?” inquired Inglis, smiling. “Tell me that. I can see you’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“I’m waiting to be called in,” explained the old man gravely. “You’ve taught me enough about medical etiquette—I shouldn’t dream of offering any suggestions until I’m called in.”
“I’ll call you in, all right,” declared the doctor. “I’d call in the d—— hum—man in the moon if I thought he could help me.”
“Well, well!” said Mr. Wallace mildly. “You’re in a bad way, and the man in the moon wouldn’t help you much—nor the Other Being whose name you thought better of mentioning—but Dr. Wallace will give you his opinion free of charge, and that’s more than your Edinburgh surgeon would do. Now, listen to me, Inglis, you’ve examined this patient of yours till you’re tired, and you can find nothing wrong with him—why, man, it’s because there is nothing wrong with him.”
Inglis looked at his old friend in amazement. “How on earth d’you make that out?” he exclaimed.
“Think it over,” chuckled Mr. Wallace. “Just think it over and see if I’m not right.”
“The child’s in pain!”
“So he says.”
“But he’s lame, he can’t walk—he’s been lying on the sofa for weeks. Would any child lie on the sofa if he could get up and play?”
“Any child wouldn’t, but that one—might,” said Mr. Wallace soberly. He leaned forward and knocked out his pipe against the grate. “I know Jay, you see,” he said. “I’ve been teaching him for four years now, and there’s precious little that Jay wouldn’t do, if it suited his purpose. He’s a strange creature—clever—twisted—tainted if you like, but he’s got tremendous powers. He’s a lonely sort of creature too—I’m sorry for Jay——”
Mr. Wallace’s voice died away, and there was silence in the room. Each man was busy with his own thoughts. Inglis was reviewing his case: it had been a strange case from the beginning—he saw that now, and saw that what Mr. Wallace said might possibly be true. Why had he not thought of this before? The answer was that he was always so anxious about that child, always ready to take a gloomy view of his slightest indisposition—he had seen Jay creep back to life from the very Gates of Death, and every winter since that first terrible winter he had seen Jay battling against the ills of the flesh. No single winter had passed without anxiety over Jay—not one. But still——
“Oh, it’s not possible!” he exclaimed aloud. “You make the child out to be a monster—to cause all that trouble and anxiety just because he doesn’t want to go to school—that’s what you’re meaning, I suppose——”
“Now listen to me,” Mr. Wallace interrupted. “You may know a deal more than I about the human body, but I’m an old man, and I flatter myself I know more than you about the human mind. There’s good in the worst of us, Inglis, and the only good thing I’ve found in Jay is his affection for Mrs. Shaw. Now, it was I who suggested school for the boy, and I not only suggested it, but I forced their hand, for I refused to teach the boy any more. The reason I did it was this, I thought they’d be better without him. I’m not blind. Inglis, and I see a deal more than folks give me credit for. Shaws is not the place it was, for there’s strain in the air—and it’s all Jay. I’ve known Johnny Shaw from his childhood, and his wife’s a sweet woman—I’m fond of the pair of them. So what did I do but take matters into my own hands and try to better them. It’s an old man’s game to meddle with his neighbour’s affairs—and I’ve seen the folly of it.”
Dr. Inglis knew enough to follow the minister’s story. “But why did you change your mind about teaching Jay?” he inquired. “All that still holds good.”
“There was one thing I hadn’t allowed for,” Mr. Wallace replied. “I’d been so busy thinking of the good that I was doing to the Shaws that I had forgotten to think of Jay. Perhaps I had deliberately blinded myself—I can’t tell——”
Dr. Inglis leant forward. “But if he’s as bad as you make out——”
“Even so he must be considered; for, however bad he may be, he is one of God’s children, and who am I to send him away from the one person he loves, from the one good influence in his life? I daren’t take that responsibility upon me, Inglis.”
“It’s a queer sort of love,” Inglis declared. “He’s caused Mrs. Shaw a great deal of trouble and untold agony of mind—if what you say is true.”
“It’s the only kind of love he knows,” Mr. Wallace replied. “He loves her so much that he cannot bear the idea of leaving her—that’s my reading of it. He’ll wriggle and lie and plot—he’ll do any mortal thing to be kept at Shaws. I’m sure of it, for I’ve seen the child’s face when he looked at her in an unguarded moment. It’s a queer kind of love—as you say—a wrong kind of love, but it’s the only kind he knows. Selfish love, Inglis—jealous love—love that seeks its own. It’s not the love that Paul was talking about when he said: ‘Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.’ ”
There was silence for a few minutes after that, and then Inglis spoke. “Love is an ill-used word—and charity’s worse. We need a new name for these feelings and passions, but let’s get back to Jay, Mr. Wallace, and this problem—what of the other children? For their sake he should go, shouldn’t he?”
Mr. Wallace had another quotation ready. “You, who know your Shakespeare, to ask me that!” he exclaimed, and there was a slight twinkle in his kind old eyes:
“ ‘The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighboured by fruit of baser quality.’ ”
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Inglis. The Shaw children are wholesome berries. They’ll take no harm—no moral harm—from Jay.”
Dr. Inglis was beaten, and he knew it, for when Mr. Wallace began to quote Shakespeare he could go on until the cows come home. He sighed, and knocked out his pipe on the shining bars of the grate. “And what about me?” he inquired ruefully. “If you’re right about the child—and I’m beginning to believe you may be right—what am I to do? Am I to go to Mrs. Shaw and tell her there’s nothing the matter with Jay? Am I to drag him out of bed? Am I to admit that I’ve been mistaken, and that there’s never been a thing wrong?”
Mr. Wallace was laughing now. “You’re to do none of these dreadful things,” he declared. “It’ll do the child no harm to lie on the sofa a bit longer. He’ll get up himself when he wearies of the game.”
“The game!” cried Inglis indignantly. “He’s made a fool of me.”
“You’re not the first, and you’ll not be the last. It’s unpleasant to be made a fool of, but fortunately nobody knows about it but me,” said the old man, with a twinkle in his eye, “and what’s more fortunate still, nobody need know if you play your cards well.”
“I’m not to say a word?” Inglis inquired.
“Not one,” declared Mr. Wallace. “There’s been too many words said already. Try what a little wholesome neglect will do for that patient of yours.”
Dr. Inglis went away in a thoughtful mood, and for the next few days he avoided Shaws, for he had decided that it could do no harm to give the minister’s remedy a trial. On the fourth day a message came from Mrs. Shaw, asking him to come over when convenient, for Jay felt better and wanted to go out. Then Dr. Inglis smiled to himself somewhat wryly, and he went over the same afternoon and played his cards as Mr. Wallace had suggested. Jay was to get up and go out, he was to walk for a little every day.
“And can I ride?” Jay inquired anxiously.
“Dear me, no,” said Dr. Inglis gravely, “no riding for you—at any rate until after the New Year”—And that will teach you not to play tricks on me, young man, he thought to himself as he saw the look of disgust and disappointment on Jay’s face. “And see that he goes to bed early, Mrs. Shaw,” he added somewhat maliciously; “we must on no account let him get overtired.”
17
School years
For the next few years life at Shaws was fundamentally monotonous in spite of the small storms which Jay delighted to raise.
Fanny and John grew older, and the children shot up. The only important event in these years was the death of Mr. Dinwiddie; he died quite suddenly of heart failure—so suddenly that Fanny was not in time to see him alive. Fanny was very sad, for she had loved her father dearly, and his death was the first real sorrow she had known, but she did not feel it so much as Alison, for she had her own life at Shaws—Alison was bereft indeed. Tom Gilmour went to Canada to study the conditions of farming over there, it was what he had always wanted to do, and his father thought it could do him no harm to see a little of the world before settling down at Langside. The other children missed him, but they accepted his absence in a philosophical spirit and got on without him as best they could, Mr. Wallace aged a good deal in these years; he had been a strong man, and had led a very regular and healthy life, but he was over seventy now and was feeling the burden of his years. John and Fanny began to realise that he could not go on educating the children much longer. This raised a problem which caused them a great deal of anxiety, for there was no school near to which they could send the children. The Whites had a governess, and Mamie Gilmour had lessons with them at Braidacres, but Jay was too old for that solution to be practicable, and the prospect of a resident tutor was too dreadful for words.
It was Alison who solved the problem of the children’s education for Fanny and John. “Send the whole three to me,” she wrote. “I can have them here—the house is large enough in all conscience—and the boys can go to the Academy and Rosabelle to Miss Macdonald’s School. John can pay me for having them if he likes, but tell him I want them, so there’s no favour about it. The long winter evenings are dreary. I had been thinking of selling the house, it is a great deal too big for one lone woman, but I would rather not sell the house—I have a feeling for it.”
Fanny showed the letter to John, and he could find no fault with the plan; its advantages were obvious: the children would be under Alison’s eye—John had a wholesome respect for his sister-in-law—and the scheme would save him a great deal of money since the only alternative seemed to be boarding-schools for all three. “It will have to be considered,” said John, with his customary caution.
Fanny was quite willing to allow John as much time as he liked to consider the matter—husbands should never be hurried, her book had told her that. She wrote back to Alison at once saying that John was considering the matter, and continued in less formal style: “You will be giving Rosabelle my room, I suppose—how strange to think of her there—and the two boys will do very well in the big nursery, for there is plenty of room for another bed if you move the dressing-chest into the window. I will come up one day and we will arrange it all. I must see you and explain everything, for there is far too much to write—and anyway they will not be coming until the term starts. Bill and Rosabelle are very strong, but Jay requires a great deal of care, he has cod liver oil three times a day …” And here followed pages of instructions and warnings with regard to the treatment and peculiarities of Jay.
Alison waded through the letter with conscientious thoroughness. So they’re coming, she thought, and smiled to herself a little, for the letter was so like Fanny that she could almost hear her speak. She was glad that they were coming, for it would be an interest in her life, and she would feel that she was once more of some use in the world. Since her father’s death, Alison had felt that she had outlived her usefulness, and each day was a desert of long empty hours, but this would be all changed if the children came, for they would give her plenty to do and to think about. So Alison wrote back to Fanny, promising to follow the instructions with care: to see that Jay’s bed was thoroughly aired—though she might have known I would see to that, thought Alison—and to take care that he did not get his feet wet, and to give him prunes for his breakfast, and cod liver oil every day, to see that he did not work too hard, and to communicate with Fanny immediately he took cold or pined, or was “off his food.” It seemed a little odd that there were no instructions about Bill or Rosabelle—but perhaps that’s as well, thought Alison, for if there had been as many pages about each of them as there are about Jay it would have taken me the whole day to read the letter.
Rosabelle enjoyed her school years; she got on well with Alison, appreciated her dry humour, and laughed at her jokes. It was a new and delightful experience to find a grown-up person who treated you like a reasonable being and was able to share in your fun. Bill was happy too, for he enjoyed the rough-and-tumble of the big school, and he made friends easily. Jay was the only one of the three who found it difficult to settle down; he missed Fanny, and Alison was a poor substitute in his estimation. Alison understood Jay too well; her dry humour pierced his defences, and rendered his well-tried weapons useless. Alison was the first person he had met who could neither be deceived nor cajoled, nor could he rouse her wrath and turn it to his own ends. “Nonsense,” she would say, in her pleasant, kind, but downright manner. “Nonsense, Jay. It will do you good to go out for a walk. Put on your mackintosh and galoshes. Surely you’re not afraid of a drop of rain—a big boy like you! Rosabelle is a girl, and Bill is much smaller than you—run along now.” And Jay, who disliked rain from the depth of his sun-worshipping heart, was forced to run along with the others. At mealtimes it was much the same. Aunt Alison never seemed to notice if he did not eat his food, she never coaxed him to eat, nor ordered special food for him if he did not like what the others were having. For several days Jay ate practically nothing, but nobody seemed to care, and Jay never suspected that his anxious hostess lay awake for hours every night wondering what on earth she was going to do with this troublesome small boy, and whether the treatment which she was deliberately meting out to him was going to “work,” or whether he would carry on with his hunger strike until she was forced to give in and pamper him or see him go into a “decline” before her very eyes. If Jay had known all this he would have held out longer, but he did not know; so, after a few days had passed, he began to eat the food that was placed before him. The change of air and the walk to school and back gave him an appetite, and it was not long before he was eating almost as much as Bill.
There were several other small—and absolutely silent—battles between Aunt Alison and Jay before things settled down into humdrum smoothness; the Battle of the Headaches was fairly typical of them all. Jay was troubled with headaches, so severe that when they occurred he was obliged to stay in bed for a whole day.
“Jay often has headaches,” Rosabelle informed her aunt as she took up her satchel of books and started off to school. “He’ll be all right to-morrow,” she added comfortingly, and held up her face for a kiss.
Darling Rosabelle! Alison thought, as she pressed her lips to the smooth soft cheek—what a nice child she was! Already they understood each other, already they were friends. Fanny was lucky in her daughter, but unfortunately she did not realise it; why couldn’t she see that Rosabelle—sane and sensible, yet full of bubbling life—was worth half a dozen of the tiresome complex Jay?
“And you really mean that I can ask Libby to tea?” Rosabelle inquired anxiously. “It won’t be a bother, I mean? Libby’s quite nice, you know—she won’t be rough and wild.”
“Yes, of course,” Alison declared. “I said so, didn’t I? Bring the child back with you at four, and I hope to patience she won’t be too quiet—I can’t stand quiet children.”
Rosabelle laughed delightedly. “I’ll tell her that,” she promised. “I’ll tell her she won’t be asked again if she’s too quiet.”
“Yes, tell her that. And the pair of you can choose some cakes at the baker’s on your way home—it’ll save me a lot of bother.”
“You dear!” cried Rosabelle, and swung away schoolwards with bright eyes and a light heart. She was well aware that it was not because of the bother Aunt Alison had deputed her to choose the cakes. She is a lamb, Rosabelle thought, and she didn’t even say “Choose nice plain ones,” and she knows quite well that I know she didn’t say it—why, I could tell Aunt Alison anything, and she’d understand.
